Goals No 101 and 102 of an utterly convincing Manchester City campaign delivered a second title in three seasons with a minimum of drama on Sunday. With Manchester United’s dramatic disintegration creating a power vacuum, it was Manchester City who outflanked Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool to etch their name in English football history.
The title was just reward for a team whose cavalier attack plundered 102 goals and dealt crushing defeats to United, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur—among others—but it took Liverpool to collapse for City to triumph.
With three games remaining, Liverpool led the table and had a first title since 1990 in their sights, after a scintillating run of 11 straight wins that captured the imagination of the country’s football fans.
Liverpool’s spring surge coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough stadium disaster, in which 96 of the club’s supporters died, but the tide of emotion could only carry them so far.
Instead, an untimely slip by captain Steven Gerrard enabled Demba Ba to score the opening goal for Chelsea in a 2-0 win at Anfield and when Liverpool then blew a 3-0 lead in a 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace, the game was up.
It was a bitter blow for 33-year-old Gerrard, who, with cruel irony, had been caught on camera rallying his teammates after their 3-2 win over City in April by crying: “This does not slip now!”
For all manager Brendan Rodgers’s protestations that it was “a mistake that can happen to anyone”, the sight of Gerrard vainly scrambling to his feet as Ba raced away from him will be the image that defines the season.
Chelsea’s victory at Anfield confirmed that manager Jose Mourinho remains the game’s arch tactical counter-puncher, but he had to settle for a third-place finish in his first season back at Stamford Bridge.
Arsenal, meanwhile, qualified for the Champions League for the 17th season running and can end a nine-year trophy drought by beating Hull City in Saturday’s FA Cup final.
While 31-goal Liverpool striker Luis Suarez put a troubled previous campaign behind him to become the season’s outstanding player, Nicolas Anelka and Alan Pardew emerged as the villains of 2013-14.
Troublesome French striker Anelka left West Bromwich Albion after being banned for five matches for performing the ‘quenelle’—a gesture associated with anti-Semitism—while Newcastle manager Pardew was hit with a seven-game ban for headbutting Hull midfielder David Meyler.
City, under Manuel Pellegrini, are now capable of taking events in their stride, winning major trophies without putting their supporters through an emotional wringer in stoppage time. They are beginning to look like a team who could do this sort of thing most seasons, and at this rate the Etihad Stadium will soon be decorated with lists of achievements and photographs of winning teams rather than improbably close squeaks against 10-man Queens Park Rangers.